The computerized voting information system, which includes means to automatically verify, collect and interchange voting data and information, encompasses networked hardware components and distributed software programs and will be used by a variety of voting entities in connection with the process of certifying voters, determining the eligibility of voters, compiling and tabulating the casted votes, and providing a secure operations scheme for the voting system.
The intended purpose of the invention is to help solve several problems that are experienced by our society with respect to the voting process: low attendance rates, increasing administrative & operations costs, time consuming tabulation tasks, inconvenience for voters, lost time from work, rigid voting guidelines, and inadequate security protection. This invention provides solutions to these problems while automating the operational tasks that are associated with the voting process, streamlining the activities of certifying all voters, and making the same and most updated data and information available to all voting entities and related representatives in a real-time manner, whenever requested and/or any voting activity was performed with respect to that data and information. As evidence of the date of conception of this invention, the appropriate Disclosure Document No. 317274 was forwarded by the inventor Richard P. Sehr on Sep. 8, 1992 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Heretofore, a variety of voting machines and systems, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,240 issued to R. F. Shoup Corporation, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,665 granted to Data Information Management Systems, Inc., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,288 issued to Texas Instruments Incorporated, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,528 granted to Advanced Technological Systems, Inc. and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,753 which was issued to Charles V. Graft, III, have been proposed. These proposals relate to a variety of specialized, dedicated voting apparatus or integrated systems settings that still rely on the existing paper-based voting environment or centralized, on-line networks.
None of these systems of the prior art, however, provide an effective solution to the problems of how to enlist the majority of eligible voters during election years and/or other voting events, to control the costs associated thereof, and to implement cost efficient security schemes. The limitations of these systems center around the fact that these systems are merely an efficient enhancement to the existing voting environment with hardware apparatus, which are dedicated to a particular voting task, or with on-line systems solutions, which lead to ever increasing communications costs. The systems proposals of the prior art also do not address the questions of (1) What specific cost savings do the systems facilitate, (2) How the systems will function in a stand alone configuration, (3) How the systems will interface with incompatible, proprietary platforms, (4) How and when the systems will handle the exchange of data and information in a real-time manner, (5) What are the privacy concerns and security requirements that are needed, and (6) How the systems will adopt to future needs and developments. Accordingly, there still is a need for a system that provides answers to these issues.